24: Live Another Day episode 5 recap: Jack and Audrey reunited

PREVIOUSLY ON 24US military tech Chris Tanner (John Boyega) is falsely accused of piloting a drone that kills four British soldiers. The real culprit is Margot Al-Harazi (Michelle Fairley) - a terrorist's widow coercing her son-in-law Naveed (Sacha Dhawan) into plotting another attack.

Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) invades London's US embassy in an attempt to acquire Tanner's flight key - which holds data that could help prevent a second strike - but is forced to take hostages to keep a team of marines at bay.

Under fire, Jack strikes a deal with the CIA's Kate Morgan (Yvonne Strahovski) - she takes possession of the flight key, but Bauer is taken into custody.

3:00pm-4:00pmSustaining a single plot-line over 24 hours - or as near as, dammit - is a near-impossible task. So in its previous 9 years on air, 24 would often divide its season into sections - interlinked segments of roughly 4-5 episodes, with each batch focusing on a different scenario or threat.

Five hours in and Live Another Day appears to have reached its first crisis point - on multiple levels, '3:00pm-4:00pm' feels like the end of one chapter and the beginning of another.

This is a Bauer-lite outing - Kiefer Sutherland's mesmerising hero appears in only a handful of scenes - and in place of his explosive exploits, LAD offers up a more proactive Kate Morgan - she's given more to do here than just chase Jack's tail - and a whole lot of inter-governmental chest-beating.

With Chloe at her side - well, in her ear - Kate serves as this episode's substitute Jack, delivering proof that Tanner's drone was hijacked. Even Mark Boudreau (Tate Donovan) has to admit that he was wrong - but if you're worried that 24's bigwigs are starting to act in a frighteningly rational manner, then allay your fears.

Mark's apology feels like a submission made solely to win back Audrey's favor. It's becoming increasingly clear with each passing hour that Heller's Chief of Staff is heading for a fall, and that his devious actions from a few hours previous are only the tip of the iceberg.

In addition to forging the President's signature to have Jack extradited, Mark's been 'protecting' Heller from "the burden of specifics" for quite some time and his past sins - which include covering up the deaths of six children, in the same drone strike that eliminated Margot's husband - are sure to catch up with him.

Even without Mark's maleficence, Heller is more than capable of making bad decisions all on his own, refusing to put Jack back in the field. Even though Bauer has an arms dealer contact who can lead the US government directly to Margot, his urgings - not to mention his much-vaunted "word" - fall on deaf ears.

For the most part, LAD remains a season of 24 that's possible for the newbies to enjoy, but as a long-time Bauer fan, I'd argue that knowing the circumstances of Jack and Heller's last face-to-face confrontation lends their reunion here some added dramatic heft.

Ditto his subsequent tearful reconciliation with Kim Raver's Audrey - the pair last met when she was in a near-comatose state of trauma and here, the re-emergence of old feelings leaves them both stunned into near-silence.

For all Mark and Heller's failings though, any 24 fan knows that the vast majority of bad decisions on this show are made by the mysterious, unseen department of vast incompetence known as 'Division'.

Again, Kate fulfils Jack's traditional role here - sidelined by her superiors despite recent achievements - but having Navarro take her place in the field is a rather clunky twist. There's no real reason why Benjamin Bratt's slick CIA superior would abandon his post for some gun-totin' action, other than the writers needed an excuse to have Kate stick around - now as the de-facto head of London HQ.

But while it's somewhat clumsy in its shifting of its key players, this edition of 24: Live Another Day does deliver on the promise of earlier episodes - paying off the lingering tease of a reunion between Jack and the Hellers in two short but oh-so-sweet scenes.

And now that the awkward manoeuvring is out of the way, the game can begin anew, with the stakes higher than ever.